The Twentieth Anniversary Mac reached the height of its celebrity by appearing in Seinfeld. It didn't stick around for the whole series, though; Jerry had a variety of Macs on his desk throughout the show, including a Mac classic and an iMac.

When the first iMac was introduced in 1998, it started a new era of computing for those who didn't need all the power (and expense) of a tower or expandable desktop. But while the Bondi blue all-in-one got a lot of attention, it wasn't Apple's first dalliance with unconventional design. Before the iMac was the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, first introduced in 1997 and discontinued 15 years ago this week, on March 14, 1998—five months before the iMac came out.

The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (or TAM) came with a PowerPC 603e CPU clocked at 250MHz and a 12.1-inch active matrix LCD display. It also came with a built-in TV and FM tuner so the user could easily flip between computer mode and television, along with a massive Bose subwoofer. Apple introduced the machine as a way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Apple's first computer, which occurred in April of 1996. At the time, most of Apple's offerings were boring beige boxes, so the TAM's design was especially unique due to its nearly flat, all-in-one nature and its metallic green-gold paint job.

During the TAM's short lifetime, it was only introduced in five countries (USA, Japan, France, Germany, UK), while a handful of machines were sent to Apple Australia. When Apple first unveiled the device at the Macworld Expo in January of 1997, the company predicted it might cost as much as $9,000, with concierge service included. When it was released in March of 1997, though, the price had been "reduced" to a mere $7,499—several thousand dollars more than the PowerMac 6500, which was priced at $2,999 with specs similar to the TAM.

If $7,499 has you reeling, just imagine seeing that price tag in 1997. It's no surprise the machine was killed after only a year—when Apple announced the TAM's discontinuation in 1998, it reduced the price to $1,995. But because the unique PC existed for such a short time, it has become a bit of a collector's item: it's easy to find people selling them on eBay for low, low prices ranging from $8,000 to $15,000 for new, untouched machines.

If you want to get an idea for how Apple marketed the Twentieth Anniversary Mac, there's a promotional video led by Apple designer Jony Ive available on YouTube. Check it out below for your vintage Apple fix:

I always lusted after that when it was first announced. Thought it was a fantastic design, especially compared to what was being offered by other companies. The price was obscene, but I just really liked the styling.

Considering the Power Mac 6500 - a *MIDRANGE* consumer desktop - was $3000, that price wasn't "insane", just "outrageous". You're used to sub-$1000 computers being the NORM. That was one of the iMac's big deals - it was CHEAP. (At $1300.)

Considering the Power Mac 6500 - a *MIDRANGE* consumer desktop - was $3000, that price wasn't "insane", just "outrageous". You're used to sub-$1000 computers being the NORM. That was one of the iMac's big deals - it was CHEAP. (At $1300.)

Not to mention components. A few years before this machine was released, I added 16MB RAM to my Mac IIsi, which was around $700 at the time. Many forget how expensive components were at this time. When inflation is factored in, you're looking at the price for a low- to mid-range system of today...

The front of the TAM offered a number of switches and settings, including a "TV/Mac" button. What's that for? Unlike other PCs at the time, the TAM came with a built-in TV tuner.)

Actually my 1995 Power Macintosh 5200 had a TV tuner card predating the Anniversary model by two years. I was/am a traveling nurse and used it on assignment. My next Mac was the much more convenient Powerbook 3400 in 1997, and I bought a video input PC card for a VCR/TV tuner and used it that way across the country (and England) for the next four years. No TV of any kind since then.

Oh, I remember it all right. I had tech-lust for that big time. This was really the epitome of what was wrong with Apple at the time. Uber expensive computers with bells and whistles no one needed and staid design. Yes, it looked "different" at the time, but the next year the iMac came out and the rest is history. I look at the 20th Century Mac as the last of the LC/PowerMac dynasty.

For the really geeky, EveryMac.com has the whole set of specs. All 250MHz of them!

Considering the Power Mac 6500 - a *MIDRANGE* consumer desktop - was $3000, that price wasn't "insane", just "outrageous". You're used to sub-$1000 computers being the NORM. That was one of the iMac's big deals - it was CHEAP. (At $1300.)

Not to mention components. A few years before this machine was released, I added 16MB RAM to my Mac IIsi, which was around $700 at the time. Many forget how expensive components were at this time. When inflation is factored in, you're looking at the price for a low- to mid-range system of today...

16MB of 30 pin SIMMs was an unholy amount of memory. Costs didn't get much better in MacLand until the late 90s. Even then, proprietary parts were still expensive. OEM cost for a iMac CD-R in 2003 was $305.

Actually my 1995 Power Macintosh 5200 had a TV tuner card predating the Anniversary model by two years. ...

I might have you beat; I had a Quadra 630 with (likely) the same tuner card in it. I later had tuner cards in a Performa 6400 and a PowerMac G3... but I went external Firewire for my PowerMac G4, and then shifted to USB with my current iMac and Mini. But enough geeky-one-ups-man-ship...

Aesthetically, I thought the 20th Anniversary Mac was drool-worthy -- compared to other offerings at the time -- but I was actually quite underwhelmed by the tech specs. It had an adequate speed processor for the time, given that it was based in part on laptop components, but the rest of the specs were not nearly as impressive as I felt they should have been -- particularly the 800x600 display resolution. If anyone is interested, you can peruse the rest of the tech specs over at Apple-history.com.

Interesting footnote to that last picture: Apple repaid Seinfeld's product placement by inventing real life jerk stores, so that George's zinger of a comeback would actually make sense. (Note to Apple fans: I don't really hate Apple stores, that's just a excuse to post a link to a Seinfeld clip. Or is it...)

At the time this came out was when Apple had a glut of Mac designs on the market. One of my favorites was the Performa 6400; the hardware was prone to instability, but the whole bottom of the tower was a subwoofer, and made the most beautifully deep and resonant Mac startup tones.

It's HIDEOUS. Boy have Apple come a long way in design since those dark days.

Uh...you mean compared to the PC designs that were typical back then? That was the era of the generic Beige Box + Fat CRT, even most Macs were that way back then.

This computer came out before the original iMac changed computer case design forever. The LCD display was a rare, expensive novelty and was probably responsible for much of the high price of the product.

Interesting factoid: If you watch the science-fiction anime Serial Experiments Lain, the people who made the series loved Macs and inserted all sorts of Apple-related imagery into much of the computer design in the series. Lain's own "Navi" (short for "knowledge navigator" a reference to Vannevar Bush's Memex) looks very much like a 20th anniversary mac. Logos resemble things from NeXT, boot sequences and whatnot have little Mac touches in them... Heh -- you can almost turn "spot the Mac reference" into a drinking game.

Actually my 1995 Power Macintosh 5200 had a TV tuner card predating the Anniversary model by two years. ...

I might have you beat; I had a Quadra 630 with (likely) the same tuner card in it...

I might have you both beat. I have a 1993 Macintosh TV, the first mac with a TV tuner and first black, maybe only black Mac. it has a 14" Sony Trinitron CRT, which was a big deal at the time. Haven't turned it on in years.

I also have a Twentieth Anniversary Mac from 1997 that I used in college for a couple years. It has an awesome Bose speaker system for the time and I used it as my main computer and TV. Still have the box, manuals, and pens / accessories.

The design does look like the B&O Beosystem 2500 we have in our livingroom (in the background of this photo below). I think that was just the ultimate high end aesthetic at the time. Minimal, emotionless slabs. I like it.https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-DA6l ... C03433.jpg

Wasn't one of these computers used in one of the 90s era Batman movies? Or was it something similar.

In truth, I'm actually surprised in seeing it again how the current iMac looks like it evolved from that machine. I suppose in a way it did, but imagine if Apple had been able to sell it at a competitive price in the 90s (and I also wonder just how much of that high price was justified...I would have guessed a price about half that, but I do know that Apple had real supply chain inefficiencies in the 90s, hence the hiring of Tim Cook).

It's HIDEOUS. Boy have Apple come a long way in design since those dark days.

Uh...you mean compared to the PC designs that were typical back then? That was the era of the generic Beige Box + Fat CRT, even most Macs were that way back then.

This computer came out before the original iMac changed computer case design forever. The LCD display was a rare, expensive novelty and was probably responsible for much of the high price of the product.

This thing is ugly even compared to a beige tower. At least you can hide the ugly parts of a PC that aren't attached to the monitor. If you insist on bolting your ugliness to the monitor itself, then there's no possible way to hide it. It's always in your face being ugly and interfering with ergonomics.

A detached LCD monitor also would have made it more obvious how tiny that display was even in 1998.

Considering the Power Mac 6500 - a *MIDRANGE* consumer desktop - was $3000, that price wasn't "insane", just "outrageous". You're used to sub-$1000 computers being the NORM. That was one of the iMac's big deals - it was CHEAP. (At $1300.)

Not to mention components. A few years before this machine was released, I added 16MB RAM to my Mac IIsi, which was around $700 at the time. Many forget how expensive components were at this time. When inflation is factored in, you're looking at the price for a low- to mid-range system of today...

$7,500 in America in 1997 equals $10,848.88 today. A fully-loaded iMac today, with every conceivable bell, whistle, and white glove service addition you could possibly get comes to $7,230. Disregarding Moore's law blatantly, in the right frame-of-reference the price shouldn't be that surprising. (This would of course apply only to this company's product, since it has generally commanded a higher market price.)

Ugh. It was Apple's utter shamelessness about its pricing (and its "whatever" attitude toward gaming on its computers--the last straw was the cancellation of the port of the original Half-Life, which ironically has recently been ported to OS X) that finally pushed me over to "the Dark Side" in 1999. After a while, you just get tired of getting bent over, you know?

BTW, I paid $1,999 each for my 20th Anniversary Macs in 1997/1998. I bought them from Cyberian Outpost (Outpost.com) which had great overnight shipping (loved that site). You could order as late as 8pm and get the item the next morning. A little while later I sold one of the two for $4k on eBay to a Microsoft Exec, actually shipping it to their office in Redmond. That sale effectively paid for the one I kept and still have. A couple weeks or month after I bought mine, they went on final clearance for $1699.

In 1987 (or was it '88?), I bought my first 8086, a Lazer XT, for around $250 I think, as mail order from Computer Shopper. It looked kind of like an Apple IIc, only slightly larger with a floppy drive on the right side. I used it to run a lot of shareware, including really small compilers and text games like Zork. This was a normal price for a clone at the time. Computer Shopper used to almost entirely consist of advertisements from small computer companies selling whatever computers they could get their hands on. You could buy the most amazing things there.

Later on, say, 1991? I bought a Hyundai Blue Chip PC/XT (this time, used, from a local guy via the classifieds) for $150. It had an amber monochrome monitor and looked like a more polished IBM PC. I think It had double 5 1/4" floppies and I think 512k of RAM. Long time ago...

I think the most I ever paid for a PC back then was around $750, which was for an IBM PS/2 around 1992. It was in a department store in Flagstaff, Az. I thought it was an extravagance, but wanted Teh Fancy. I ended up ditching it a year or two later when it wouldn't play Doom or Descent, and wound up building a 486 for about $500 worth of parts.

Want to see some old ads, for non-mac computers? Note the prices. Compared to anything made by Apple, PCs were dirt cheap.